


From The Mouths Of People Who Have Had To Live

by verbaepulchellae



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Ambiguously Happy Ending, Angst, F/M, Future Fic, Mythological Elements, Speculative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 09:06:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6278251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbaepulchellae/pseuds/verbaepulchellae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy had thought he had experienced every heartbreak a person could know in his time on Earth. Until Clarke Griffin kissed him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From The Mouths Of People Who Have Had To Live

**Author's Note:**

> It's show night! But we're on Hiatus! Have this instead?

Bellamy thought he had experienced every heartbreak a person could know in his time on Earth. Death, betrayal, desertion, the dawning dread of realizing irreversible events had been set in motion by his own hand. He thought after his first year on Earth, nothing could ever cut him as deeply as his first heartbreaks had. Nothing, that is, until Clarke Griffin kisses him like she’s dying, clinging with icy cold fingers to his shirt even as she tears her mouth from his and staggers away from him, horror rising fast in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and Bellamy is still awestruck, head tipped forward to receive her kiss, arms frozen halfway in their assent to wrap around her, because he has loved Clarke with his whole soul for what seems like an eternity. “Oh God, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” he wants to laugh as he says it. Wants to draw her back in and kiss her with a smile on both their mouths because that would be tasting happiness as far as he’s concerned, but he realizes Clarke looks like she’s going to be sick and Bellamy feels nauseous at the thought. “Don’t say this was a mistake,” he begs. “Please, Clarke. Not this.”

Clarke stares at him, brows furrowed, like she doesn’t follow. “Bellamy,” she says as if she’s speaking to a child. “You can’t want this.”

He does laugh at that, ragged, shocked. “Want this?” He repeats. “Clarke, you’re all I want.” 

And it’s true. Everything else he has: Octavia safe and their relationship mended and tested; Arkadia and Skaikru have survived; his friends alive and as happy as teenagers who have witnessed their people murdered around them and have helped wipe out civilizations can be; Clarke, home. And he could have been happy with that, knowing Clarke was close, healing, working with him, he could have loved her and never told her and known the sweet melancholic happiness he associated with Earth. Until Clarke kissed him, and now all he can think about is her mouth on his, her shuddering breath against his lips, the way her body melted against his own. He’s ravenous for it. Can’t imagine living without it.

Clarke stares at him like he might vanish in front of her, fists clenched at her sides, mouth ajar and it sounds like she breaks her own heart as much as his when she says, “I can’t. Not you.”

And his world grinds to a halt and the trees lose that special Earth green and the stars feel like they’re blinking out one by one until Bellamy shakes his head because he’s not going to accept that. “Then what the hell was that just now?” He rumbles at her and Clarke looks like she wants to shrink into herself. He’s never seen her look so small. “A mistake?”

“Yes, Bellamy. A mistake.” Clarke says like she wants to mean it and when she looks up at him her eyes beg him to hear her and Bellamy schools his temper and takes a deep breath, because he finally knows Clarke well enough to know when she’s lying and he has allowed Clarke to torture them both for far too long now. 

“Wasn’t for me,” he says softly. “Clarke, that was the most amazing thing that’s happened to me since we fell out of the goddamn sky and survived.”

Clarke shakes her head as he speaks. “No, Bellamy. Don’t.”

“That?” Bellamy says, taking a step closer to her, “That was what Greek poets and astrologers put constellations in the stars for.”

Clarke drops her eyes from his face and trembles when Bellamy takes another step closer and he waits like he would with a spooked animal until she lifts her eyes to him again.

“That,” he whispers, taking the last step he needs to reach her and enclosing her face in his palms, “That was what I never thought I deserved, not from you.” She looks up at him, eyes searching his desperately and then falling to his lips as if drawn there by a homing signal. 

“So don’t tell me that was a mistake,” he says just loud enough for her to hear. “Because I love you, Clarke. And that could never be a mistake.”

Clarke catches his wrists in her hands and locks them in place as she steps back from him again. “I will not,” Clarke says slowly, with finality, “ever lose you because of who I am. No,” she says, shaking her head. “No, I’m not losing you, Bellamy.”

Bellamy feels his jaw tick. “Clarke,” he tries but she cuts him off.

“No. Bellamy I made up my mind a long time ago. I will not let you be taken because I’m not strong enough to resist you.”

“Clarke, what are you talking about?” 

“Do you know who I am?” She chokes on the words like they’re poison. “I am Wanheda, Bellamy. I am the Commander of Death and everyone I love dies.” The way she says it makes her sound like an age-old God, voice low and devastatingly sure; an oracle giving her final decree, revealing the true tragedy that rends families apart and leaves babes dead in the street. Her whole body shudders after the words leave her and Bellamy sees her brace herself, sees how much it taxes her. “But not you.”

Bellamy’s known Clarke was the commander of death ever since she appeared like an apparition over his shoulder and hummed a dying boy to sleep as she slipped a knife in his throat, a knife she took from Bellamy’s trembling hand. And it has never stopped him loving her. It has never made him lose sight of the girl underneath whatever deity she may think inhabits her body and exacts a price for it’s leant power. To him, she will always be Clarke. To him, she will always be imperfectly his.

“I’m not buying that, Clarke,” Bellamy says. He won’t raise his voice, not when she’s like this. Not when he sees her raging against herself already. “So you love me.” She looks at him in horror again, like saying the words aloud will make it true and doom them both. “You going to stop loving me just because you punish us both for Finn and Lexa’s death? For Wells and your Father’s? You going to stop loving me just because you’ve decided you want to keep me alive?”

“I can try,” Clarke insists, defiant and proud in her resolution and it drives Bellamy crazy with how much he loves that infuriating self-sacrificing streak in her.

“And me?” He asks. “Am I going to stop loving you because you won’t be with me? Is that how you think this works?”

“If I break your heart enough,” Clarke says, her mask slipping back in place. “Maybe one day you will.”

“Too fucking bad,” Bellamy says. “Because the way I love you, Clarke? It’s not going away just because you won’t let yourself be with me. You want to stop loving me? Fine. Stop. But I can guarantee you, you’re it for me. I could travel this goddamn planet twice over and never find anyone to love the way I love you.”

He sees the mask crumple and Clarke stares at Bellamy like she doesn’t know him and like he’s all she’s ever known. “I will destroy you,” she whispers, half a plea, half a promise.

“So destroy me,” Bellamy says and closes the distance between them too quickly for her to stop him. He catches her face in his hands again and keeps her there. “It’s not like you haven’t already.”

When he kisses her, he knows it’s not what she’s expecting. Where her kiss had been desperate and fierce and fire burning wildly, he kisses her as soft and gentle as the first time he pressed a kiss to Octavia’s head. He brushes his lips across hers carefully, does it again just as slow and Clarke makes one last noise, desperate and hurt, and kisses him back. 

Let death come. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a quote from Mark Twain: "All say, 'How hard it is we have to die'- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of those who have had to live."
> 
> Comments and Kudos always brighten my day!


End file.
